


Good Answer

by WyrmDisco



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, alcohol use, just a silly little fluff piece, weed use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyrmDisco/pseuds/WyrmDisco
Summary: What if they got high and kissed in a bathroom? I think it would be neat.
Relationships: Fero Feritas/Lem King
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Good Answer

You never really realize how large and clumsy you are until you've drunk quite a bit of unmarked alcoholic punch from someone else's kitchen, um. Bucket. And then of course your hands are big and over-feeling against the smiles of the same child over the years, time flying backwards the closer you get to the bathroom. And god! Thank god for the bathroom! Thank you, I love you, bathroom. Sweet little peaceful space, with all the feeling of an elevator both spatially and oh, physically? Is the room moving or ... oh god.

"What the fuck are you saying?" Comes a voice from nowhere, startling Lem King into zipping his fly back up and catching a bit of skin in the process. He yelps a bit and looks sheepishly about the room, mindlessly rubbing but blinking very purposefully.

"Hello?" He says, imagining the word as fog on a brisk morning.

"You came in here-" replies the Bathroom Ghost, "narrating yourself in the second person. Cmon. What? What is that?" The words end with gabled laughter and Lem recalls suddenly, as if in a dream, that bathrooms are made of also slightly smaller segmented areas called "showers" and often also "bath tubs,” which are hidden behind a curtain.

So he raises his hand to the curtain- old. It's so old, it probably came with the house. It's probably covered in the mold clause in poor Devar's lease agreement. "TENANT MUST FREQUENTLY CHECK PRECIOUS ANCIENT SHEET FOR SIGNS OF MOLD" followed by how much carelessness in this regard would cost from the security deposit.

Lem looks at his hands more, desperately trying to make a decision, when the sheet is ripped back on its own! The bathtub shower is empty! Wait. No. He looks down.

There is a small man folded in on himself , wrapped in a thick green wool blanket, glowering. Really just, glowering. 

"Hello?" Lem says, feeling very aware of both the temperature in this room and his own tongue in his mouth .

"Hey," says the bathroom ghost- now a bit less a ghost but only very slightly.

"Do I know you?"

"You do now."

Lem blinks, "Oh."

They look at each other for a moment before Lem says, "You have leaves in your hair."

"Oh!" Says the bathroom ghost, "shit!" and he runs his hands through curly brown hair, nails catching equally on tangled knots and what appears to be enough twigs to make a weaver bird quite happy.

Lem's legs are suddenly too heavy underneath him, and he slumps to the floor. Squatting isn't fine, actually. So he rocks backwards and sits cross-legged; one thigh angled up and away from the toilet, the other is pressed into the spiraly cotton-blue bath mat. 

Lem watches the ghost move his arms up and over, scratching at the hard-to-inspect bits of his head. The blanket falls to his shoulders- a clutch cape without a clutch- and the ghost has lovely dark arms with lovely dark hair and really Lem ought to say something to him, and what he settles on is a very stupid,

"Why've you got a bird's nest in your hair?" 

"Why- wait what's your name?"

"Lem."

"Why haven't you got a birds nest in _your_ hair, _Lem_?"

There isn't a good answer to that question.

"There isn't a good answer to that question." Lem runs his hands up and down his legs, trying to keep away the pins and needles of sleep.

"Well, give me a good answer to a different question, then."

Lem wills his brain to have a synapse and blurts, "Yes."

"To what?"

"Your," Lem looks up at the trinkets and alters, his good friend's rather bad bathroom decor, "The good answer to a different question."

"Well, Lem, what's the fucking question?" His grin is like a bobcat. Maybe a lynx? Or a panther. Toothy and rare.

"What's your name?" 

"That can't be the question, my name isn't _Yes._ "

Lem runs a hand over his head, tugging at the loose braid over and around his shoulders. His legs are definitely asleep by now. Fuck. He says without a hint of humor, "Your name can't be Bathroom Ghost, either." 

"Oh my god." Bathroom Ghost shifts in the bathtub, a spinning top and tremendous struggle to face Lem directly, "I can't believe it. How did you know my name is Bathroom Ghost?" 

He stands up then, clutching the blanket to his heart so it cocoons around him. He steps first onto the bathtub ledge; nudges, with a careful toe, the toilet lid over and closed- it makes that hollow noise it does- and then he steps finally onto the toilet, looking seriously out the small window above it.

"What are you doing?" Lem asks.

"I already crashed the party," he fiddles with the window crank- unscrewing it so far in the wrong direction that it comes all the way out, growling, and screwing it back in and around until the window cracks open, "I can’t smoke up the bathroom, too. That would just be rude."

Lem leans back and away to look at this curious blanket creature, "You're going to smoke?"

A squinted inspection of the acute angles made by the window panels deems them Open Enough before those hands that broke the crank and gardened soft curls also fish out a small hand-rolled joint from what must be a pocket dimension beneath the blanket. 

"Yeah, you want some?" 

Hm. "Yes." 

Lem tries to stand, and marvels that he had squished himself onto the floor in this way in the first place. Honestly, when his leg gives out a bit, he should have seen it coming. 

Small hands grip the meat of his arm, and then he is yanked enough to his right to reach a steadying hand behind him- oh excellent! A sink to lean on. 

"Good answer!" Says the not-ghost, and he is a coyote's grin.

The first hit is weak. The second makes Lem wonder if, if the blanket were somehow removed from this situation- the absolute volume of it an obfuscation and hindrance- if he would see the slow filling of a stomach and the rise of a chest. Maybe the lift of shoulders, too, someone who doesn't fully understand where the lungs are but certainly has the spirit.

Damn that blanket. Curse it to hell.

"Here," and those hands that broke the crank, gardened soft curls, and fished out a joint quickly were approaching Lem's face, a peace sign with a lit joint in the middle, turned so Lem could take a drag.

Lem was careful. Of course. He was so careful, with the room spinning around him certainly only from the various ill-advised punches he has had thus far. Certainly. And the heat of the room, the sweat he feels in cool rivers on his back, is absolutely also just from that.

And not at all from the hand that broke the crank, gardened soft curls, approached his face, and touched two fingers to his lips. 

The pounding sound of a waterfall, a catalog of bird calls, rhythm, color. Rhythm. Color.

"Um," his smile is a sunshower, "You know you need to breathe. Right. For it to-" the other, second-favorite hand waves vaguely in the air, a lighter spinning in Lem’s sixth-through-tenth favorite fingers. "I'm gonna have to light it again. Cmon." Dark eyes examine small hands, a blue-hearted flame, and the red embers that flare when a quick breath is taken. Lem is offered his two favorite fingers once more.

"Hello? Hello? Hey!" 

"Hi." Lem feels the apples of his cheeks when he smiles.

"You're weird." 

Lem's eyes look quickly as if the hands of a clock-one, twelve, seven, and a sharp embarrassed squint at five in the afternoon. He scrunches his eyes hard enough that little magic lights flit across the other man's face- lips drawn, eyes rolled. A soft mocking. 

The not-ghost clicks his tongue. "Fero." 

"What?"

"A good answer to a different question."

Lem blinks.

"My name."

"Oh!" 

Fero rolls his eyes. "Cmon, Lem, keep a theme."

"Sorry." 

Fero takes another hit and blows the smoke out the window. Lem watches Fero's neck stretch, counts the hairs growing from his chin. 

Fero is still looking out the window when he says, "Seriously, you don't have to." But he is looking at Lem when he says, "Didn't mean to peer pressure you."

"We're peers?"

Fero's eyes go wide and his mouth opens- theater shock. "ARE WE PEERS?" He gasps, again, a curled hand covering his mouth. "L-" the act drops, "wait, what's your last name?"

"King."

Fero leans in close, a head taller than Lem from the height of the toilet he stands on, and accuses, "LEM KING!" 

Lem blushes. "What's your last name?" 

Fero quickly leans back, tosses around the items in his hands, and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. "Feritas."

Softly, Lem says, "Fero Feritas?"

Fero blinks several times quickly and once very hard. Close. Pressure. Open. "You can't just-" he smiles and runs a hand over his face to hide it, feigning exasperation. Sighs out. "Anyway-"

Lem settles further against the sink, looking up at Fero. "Mhm."

Fero looks at him, squints hard, and re-lights his joint. He looks at Lem and Lem thinks he must see something there because Fero puffs a little ring at him before exhaling the rest out the window.

"You don't know Devar?" 

"Who?"

Lem nods slowly. "This is his bathroom."

"Oh!" Fero glances up and down, eyes catching on the shiny clutter, "He has bad taste in souvenirs."

"He does."

Fero chuckles and shifts his weight. "You aren't going to ask why I'm here?"

Lem doesn't think about it very hard. "No." He looks at the red bit still burning, a magic wand in Fero’s hands. Or a roach, if you were a bit more practical.

Fero smirks. "You want the last hit?" 

"Sure."

“Okay,” Fero turns the joint around in his hand, leaning forward with it towards Lem. When he is close enough to hush his voice he says, “Here ya go.” 

Then Fero’s hand retreats towards his own mouth, and he gingerly takes the lit end between his teeth. Lem’s eyes go wide. Fero squints and readjusts his jaw so the joint wags up and down, a conductor’s baton saying _Well, what are you waiting for?_

Lem’s hands, still behind him against the kitchen sink, grip the marble. He hopes that will be enough to ground him. He leans forward, eyes downcast, and takes the other end in his mouth. He inhales as Fero exhales, filling his lungs like he’s drowning. He can smell rain and spice, and is sure it isn’t from the weed, and Lem thinks very hard about bridges, transistors, bass guitars, anything else connected point-wire-point the way they are. He’s like… a hair dryer. Or maybe he is just looking at one right now, it’s hard to say. 

It’s hard to say anything with Fero doing this. 

Until Lem’s lungs are burning from holding his breath so long, and he coughs out the window in three embarrassing hacks. Fero reaches over to pat his back and mutters sweet nothings between his taunting chuckles.

“First time shotgunning?” He says, after Lem has twisted to bend his head to the sink and drink awkwardly out of it. 

Lem takes two more precious gulps of metallic tap water before responding, “Is that what it’s called?”

“Yeah. Wanna try again? I underestimated my rolling powers. There’s still some left.”

Then fingertips tap piano scales into Lem’s back, begging him to remove himself from the waterfall. _Come back out to play!_ they say to him, insistent. 

So he does come back out to play, twisting around and then overcompensating to try and remove the weird pain in his back that’s there now; some type of young adult body pain that a Lem of age 22 would have thought he’d avoid. Lem of 27 knows better. He knows bending over and twisting hurts his back. He also knows that he’s sobering up fast- a terrible quality, really- and that it takes more than a few hits to really get him. These are all examples of things he purposefully does not account for when looking at Fero makes his _chest_ constrict- not his back- and fills him with a heat he dismisses as a side-effect of the alcohol and drug use.

Fero really is quite handsome. His hair is wild and so soft-looking, his hands are clever and his laugh is infectious even when it’s mean, and he is also speaking right now. He has been speaking for quite some time, Lem realises.

“-Right?” He asks, dark eyes glittering somehow in the fluorescent single light of Devar’s terrible bathroom.

Lem blinks. “Yes. Right. Of course.”

Fero grins an evil grin, one that says _I know you were not listening to me._ He brings the teeny, miserable roach to his lips and carefully, intently, purposefully inhales until the last bit of ashes fall across his knuckles. Lem is disappointed, thinking he was fooled for all of two seconds, before Fero leans forward and places his lips against Lem’s.

It isn’t a kiss, not really. It’s just a touch. Fero pokes against Lem’s cheek with his nose, and all at once Lem is hit with a freight train of understanding. He opens his mouth, and Fero blows the smoke in.

He inhales, he holds his breath, and follows the rules. Their lips are still pressed together. Fero closes his mouth first, and that’s the closest to real kissing it gets, because he pulls away. 

Lem just looks at Fero. His dark tiger’s-eye irises, the curve of his nose, the scruff on his chin and sides of his face- scruff Lem now knows the feel of. He’s really quite handsome. 

Fero laughs at Lem’s dumbstruck expression. When Fero cradles one of Lem’s cheeks to turn his face to the window to exhale, Lem thinks idly that the _right_ hand is his favorite, now, actually. 

And it is a blessing that that favorite hand is still on his cheek when he turns back, when their eyes meet again. And it is a curse that his two favorite fingers come up to touch his lips again, ghosting across them.

“Hey,” Fero says, quiet, “Wanna get out of here?”

As if Lem has a choice, anymore, really. Looking into eyes like that. “Yes.”

Fero laughs. “Good answer.”

**Author's Note:**

> WIH 14:  
> AUSTIN (as Emmanuel): Why do you have weed? [pause]  
> JACK (as Lem): Right, well that’s not mine.  
> [Keith and Ali laugh]  
> KEITH: He’s holding it for a friend.


End file.
